Trial bar v. tort reform

A recent op-ed in POLITICO by Anthony Tarricone, president of the American Association of Justice, describes the thousands of participants at hundreds of health care town halls as “angry mobs” scaring seniors with claims of death panels. He rushed to defend trial lawyers, who he claimed were being used as a “scapegoat for all America’s ills and woes.”

But my experience with the health care debate has been quite different from Tarricone’s tall tale. The thousands of people who attended my public forums were not angry mobs; they were concerned citizens exercising their constitutional rights. They did not scream, shout or attempt to burn trial lawyers at the stake. They came to express their views — as Americans in a democracy.

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They believe that America has one of the best health care systems in the world. They want to improve the current system without reducing the quality of care for all Americans. And they know that enacting tort reform is a first step.

Doctors and insurance companies pay billions of dollars annually to defend themselves against malpractice suits. The current system rightly allows patients to sue for money lost or additional costs incurred because of malpractice.

But it is the unlimited damages for “pain and suffering” that allow trial lawyers to abuse the system. According to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health, 40 percent of medical malpractice suits filed in the U.S. are “without merit.”

Despite the frivolous nature of many of these suits, juries often award hundreds of millions of dollars to plaintiffs — and their trial lawyers. There is no way to predict these costs, so every doctor must purchase malpractice insurance at great expense to protect against frivolous lawsuits. A Department of Health and Human Services study found that unlimited excessive damages add $70 billion to $126 billion annually to health care costs.

Doctors are so concerned about frivolous lawsuits that they order unnecessary — and expensive — tests and procedures that are of no benefit to the patient. HHS estimates the national cost of defensive medicine is more than $60 billion. The costs of litigation and defensive medicine are then passed off to the patient in the price of health care.